How I Stayed in America (Part 22)

We finally got our first full-fledged house. The family house — mine, my husband’s, and my son’s. This is a wonderful feeling that a person can obtain — the feeling of being at home. It’s amazing that “home” can be anywhere, no matter where you were born or raised. For me, home is where my family is. It is important to state that I had to learn and understand that it is not a place that should define a person, but rather  a person should define a place. We always complain: “Oh, I don’t like it here, it’s boring here, it’s dirty here”… Unfortunately, this is all triggered by self-dissatisfaction. No place should define whether a person is   happy or not.

Our first home was pretty tasteless. However, this is according to my principles today. Indeed, people’s tastes change, and this is also a process of getting to know oneself. We bought it on a mortgage, like all ordinary Americans tend to do. It is a system which allows a person with a job to have a home. Therefore, people hold on to their work. I would even say that they are terrified of losing their job. Our house was inexpensive. We bought it for $525,000 in installments for 30 years. This was a new option for my husband’s newbie contract.

I’m currently trying to remember what I did in Utah the first years of my life there. And you know what? I can’t. Because I didn’t do anything. I   sat with the child, cooked, and went to games every other day.

Professionally, I was completely unsuitable. It felt like my brain had shrunk a little. As a matter of fact, scientists have proven that the brain of a pregnant woman decreases during pregnancy. This acts as a protective reaction of the body. Apparently, my brain has both shrunk and never enlarged. Surely, you are familiar with this physiological sensation known as the feeling of dullness. Nature cares about us, and

understands that motherhood + “Groundhog Day” can lead to a serious chemical imbalance. Despise me all you want for saying this, but a normal woman cannot function fully when she has a baby in her arms 24 hours a day. Despite this, when our son was one year old, I seriously thought about the second child. And then contemplation began.

After the first forced caesarean, Dr. Macy gave me a Depo-provera to exclude the possibility of pregnancy for almost a year. In America, a gynecologist is obliged to discuss methods of contraception with a   client. This is one of the key points. When filling out papers and medical history, you always need to answer the question about the method of contraception. Furthermore, after cesarean, in order to prevent accidental pregnancy, the doctor is in some way responsible for his patient. So, Macy offered to give me an injection of Depo-Provera. At that moment I was young and had no idea what it was. As far as I understood back then, this drug inhibits  ovarian  function.  Therefore, the ovaries seem to dry out somewhere somehow, and, primitively speaking, artificial menopause sets in. Not permanently, of course, but   it is not known when the ovaries would revive. And the three years of  hell began…